The Long Dark Listlessness of The Soul

One of the hardest things for me to let go of has been… well… I don’t know.

A feeling of dread? Ennui? Listlessness? Dissatisfaction? Lack of contentment? A dark heavy cloud hiding at the edge of my awareness?

I really don’t know.

And that, in a nutshell, is exactly the problem.

How do you let go of something that’s a combination of dozens of little factors, most of which are well below the level of consciousness? Something that has become so much a part of ourselves that we can no longer see it?

The stuff we can see (or hear) – those hyper-critical inner voices – and the stuff we can’t. No no, that’s not the bit I’ve learned. That’s just the intro. Stick with me here.

The stuff we can see

This is (relatively) easy to dump.

To clear this, you can simply ask yourself questions and go with whatever pops up. Just love it & let it go. Super simple.

So, any emotion or feeling you can think of that’s non-loving, go with that. Whatever feels right. Whatever resonates. Whatever seems to get results.

Some examples:

I love that part of me that:

regrets…

has disappointment myself by..

feels let down by…

is never good enough…

is never good enough for… (mum, dad, partner, boss)

will never be good enough for…

wants…

wants control of…

wants safety from…

wants approval from…

resents…

hates…

still hates…

hates myself…

is unhappy that…

will never be happy until…

wants to change…

doesn’t want to change…

is still sad about…

is still upset about…

feels let down by…

is nervous about…

worries about..

always worries…

doesn’t believe I can…

is hesitant about…

won’t let me be happy…

is afraid of…

is bored of…

is ashamed of…

is embarrased by…

You can see – all we’re doing here is going for any non-loving emotion that we think might be even slightly related to the darkness. If something resonates, great! We can let it go. If it doesn’t, no problem, just move on to the next.

I went through maybe another 40 or 50 phrases – just anything that popped in my head. You get the idea, you don’t need to be spoon-fed.

How To Release It

Simply get quiet, say the phrase (for example) “I love the part of me that will never be good enough for…” and let your mind fill in the gap. Let go of any tension that arises – just love it & let it go. Keep saying it (in your mind or out loud, doesn’t matter) until you feel calm & peaceful about the phrase.

This is also one of the reasons that writing morning pages works so well. Morning pages (or stream-of-consciousness writing) simply entails sitting down somewhere relatively quiet, and writing down everything that pops in your head. It gets all those voices out in front of you, out into the light of day.

As a bonus, it’s also great practice writing.

Often just acknowledging that these thoughts exist is enough to see through them to the truth and effortlessly let them go.

THE STUFF WE CAN’T SEE

No big surprise, this stuff is a little trickier to release.

So how do you get rid of something you can’t see?

Well, here’s the trick. Much like with dreams our subconscious is communicating with us.

Working logically though it:

If whatever-it-is isn’t affecting our lives, then it’s not a problem.

If it is affecting our lives, then even if we don’t know why or what it’s about, we can describe that effect.

Since our subconscious is the one hiding the root cause from us, we can let it do the work, let it connect backwards from our description of the effect to the root itself.

If we want to heal dreams, we work on them as if they’re reality. Why? Because it’s the clearest way to communicate back with our subconscious – in exactly the language it’s using to communicate with us.

So, do exactly the same thing here.

Be as explicit and specific as you can, but don’t worry for a second about anything below what you can see.

If you don’t get any resonance (despite having the feeling), try amping the language up a bit. “I completely love..” “I deeply love..” “I love everything about…” etc. Just go with your gut.

The more you listen to your intuition, the more you’ll realise it has all the answers you’ll ever need.

Don’t worry if your description might sound ridiculous to anyone else. You’re not doing it for them, you’re doing it for you.

If the thought of spending time with your inlaws makes you feel purple and violent, then “I love feeling purple and violent when I see my inlaws” is perfect. Once you feel peaceful saying that, of course, you can step it up even further “I love spending time with my inlaws.” Ha ha. Good luck. You’ll be awesome. It’ll be gone in minutes (or faster).

Obviously this will bring up a lot of tension, but that’s exactly the point. All those feelings are coming up to leave. They’re just feelings, nothing more. There’s no need to react to them or be afraid of them. Just send them love, welcome them up and let them go.

So, just keep paying attention, describing whatever you’re feeling as accurately as you can and then releasing it.

Nothing wrong with a little mindfulness.

Don’t be surprised if you get radically different descriptions every time you come back to it. Typically (and particularly with the stuff that our subconscious is hiding from us) larger or more immediate issues will mask smaller or older ones.

The sign that you’re making progress is when stuff that used to bother you doesn’t in the slightest any more. You couldn’t care less about it, or it just seems funny now.

If your visual description of what you’re feeling no longer resonates for you, that’s because it’s gone. If the descriptions are changing, that’s because you’re working down through the layers.

It is, as they say, all good.

I know if I look back at my life, I’ve had a definite dark layer to my existence, bubbling along beneath everything else.

Historically I’ve masked or escaped from it – with alcohol, caffeine, sex or bursts of flat-out enthusiasm. I can look back now and see that it’s cost me relationships, “You’re down and nothing I do gets through to you.”